LOWELL -- Himanshu Bhatnagar was having a successful life in India. He graduated college, joined a computer-hardware company and had a lot of early accomplishments.

But something was missing.

"I was doing well there, but it wasn't intellectually satisfying. I knew I could do a lot more with my life," Bhatnagar said. "You couldn't start a business over there, so when I came here, I was looking to get ahead in technology knowledge.

Advertisement

"

And the founder/CEO of HB Software Solutions, a transportation-technology company, has certainly gotten ahead over the last 28 years in America.

Bhatnagar was recently nominated for The Immigrant Learning Center's 2013 Immigrant Entrepreneur Awards in the science and technology category. The 26 nominees who founded businesses in Massachusetts "represent outstanding business leaders from across the commonwealth," and seven of the 26 are from Lowell.

After working at an Indian computer-hardware company, Bhatnagar received a master's degree and a doctorate in computer science from UMass Lowell. He then joined a transportation-research lab in Lowell before becoming Managing Consultant of Gensym Corp., an artificial-intelligence-software company.

But Bhatnagar's dream was to start his own business, finally reaching this summit after he was chief architect of the Panama Canal operating-system project in the late 1990s.

"Every morning I wake up and am excited to come here (to HB Software Solutions), despite the difficulties that might come along," Bhatnagar said. "I get a lot of loyalty from the staff, and they will go out of their way to do things and to take care of customers, so the customers are usually very happy."

HB Software Solutions provides transportation software to more than 750 agencies in America. This software allows transportation agencies to put their routes on the Internet for commuters to check out. Also, Bhatnagar is working on a cellphone-app project that would let commuters know where the bus is and how long it will take to get there.

The company's software is used in 18 states, including Massachusetts with the Lowell and Fitchburg regional transit authorities. Bhatnagar also has plans to expand to India and other countries.

"We've always been on the cutting edge of the technology," he said. "People in the industry look at our solutions and find them useful and cheap. But mostly it's hard work and the people in the company.

"And our vision is very big, so no matter what we do, we're moving in the forward direction," he added.

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sun. So keep it civil.